Online advertising has come a long way over the years. A person used to call another person and pay that person to place an ad on a website. There was nothing sophisticated about the process, and companies had virtually no visibility into who was seeing their ads.

Today, more and more online advertising takes place via real-time bidding, where smart technology companies use a lot of data to make good decisions about who is seeing what ad. Advertisers have visibility into what’s going on, user experience has improved a ton, and real value is being created.

This is a good thing. We get to see content, for free, in exchange for seeing ads on websites - ads are the underlying currency of the Internet. As advertising technology improves, more and more ad dollars are spent, expanding the pie and making room for more cool companies to exist who don’t need to charge their users.

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